Bred for comedy: Alfie Brown on being the son of Spitting Image staff

Alfie Brown is the son of two comedians - one an impressionist, and the other a comedy songwriter - but he has been determined to follow his own path into stand up and tackle subjects that jokes can negotiate better than conversation

The son of two legends of Spitting Image - impressionist and 2006 Strictly star Jan Ravens and the show’s musical director Steve Brown - Alfie Brown has to confess a career in comedy was his only goal.

He was, he laughs, ‘a eugenics project bred for the purpose of comedy’, and he can vividly remember the first time he tried to beat his dad at the game. “From when I was 10, my dad was on tour with Steve Coogan,” he recalls,

“He would go on the road with Steve Coogan, Simon Pegg... I always wanted to be funny around them. I remember thinking, ‘I have to say something sarcastic because it’ll win me favour’.

“I probably held off longer from going into comedy than I should have, even though I was sure it was what I wanted. When I was 18, I quite wanted to be like my dad. He was a single bloke who lived in a nice flat, who smoked and drank and chatted women up. That seemed alright to me.”

Spitting Image creator Roger Law with some of his puppets

Alfie, though, always fancied stand up. And modern times have validated his view that it would offer him a better chance to address the topics he wanted to on his own terms.

Stand up has become an opportunity for philosophy - especially as the study of philosophy has become less about progressive free expression and more about the academic analysis of historical schools of thought, he considers.

It’s an approach that has seen him labelled gutsy, a comedian unafraid to speak the unsayable: to talk about radical politics, racism, sexual crimes, even congenital nipples - and then judge it.

Comedian Jan Ravens (right) as Anne Robinson for The Weakest Link Lookalikes Special

“I think the words, in inverted commas, are more contentious than any of the ideas I have,” he says.

“There’s a level of shame we operate at and I think it’s entertaining to lose that shame and have that sense of release and truth. To all intents and purposes, that’s just observational comedy, but you’re observing something darker and with more depth.

“The ideas in comedy should be freeing and lightening, and it’s enjoyable to get engaged with people expressing freeing views on humanity. Who offer a redefinition of a previously defined truth.

“If there’s a moral consensus on anything, I just can’t help but ask, ‘Why?’.”

The XS Malarkey crowd, to where Alfie returns on December 1 for his first headline slot is particularly good at letting him run with an idea.

“It’s frequented by the Manchester University Comedy Society and they’re a good set of lads and lasses - as well as big on Green Party politics. So I’ll probably engage in a long, drawn-out conversation with them about how Jeremy Corbyn had made them irrelevant.

“An XS crowd is very smart and cool, and they do give me a lot of leeway for leaning into ideas - so you can be funny rather than antagonistic without redemption.”